Software Freedom Day is September 19th

Please visit http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams to see what's going on
in your area, or if you're in the Boston area, join staff from the
Free Software Foundation in Chinatown for a day of fun and freedom.

FSF will host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software

The Free Software Foundation will host a mini-summit on Women in Free
Software to discuss how the free software community can cultivate and
increase participation by women in free software's development and
activism communities.

FSF files object to Google Book Search settlement

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has filed an objection in court to
the proposed Google Book Search settlement. The objection urges the
court to reject the proposed settlement unless it incorporates terms
that better address the needs of authors using free licenses like the
GNU Free Documentation License, and does not provide special
competitive advantages to Google.

Farewell from Sarah

I had a wonderful time working at the Free Software Foundation this
summer, but it is time for me to return to Hampshire College as my
internship comes to a close. It was great working closely with the FSF
staff and I have learned a great deal. I spent the majority of my time
working on LibrePlanet and defectivebydesign.org.

We're looking for a few good programs

Chances are, if you spend any time hacking, new code is always a
useful thing. Well, we're here to help you out. For those of you who
don't know, the Free Software Directory is updated almost daily with
fresh new code just for you.

What's missing from the Directory? Do you have some fantastic new free
project you've been working on that should be in the Directory but
isn't? Have you been too shy to send us something but just need that
final push to submit it? Well, here's your chance.

Working with Ogg Theora and the video tag

Ogg Theora is becoming a big deal, and that's exactly what we hoped
for when we launched the PlayOgg campaign in May 2007. The free,
patent-unencumbered video codec now works in over 24% of the world's
web browsers with no plugins required. The latest 1.1 release of the
Theora encoder is coming out any day now. And when it does, the huge
improvements in quality and functionality made over the past year with
support from Wikimedia and others will percolate out into the major
GNU/Linux distributions, arriving at the fingertips of those who build
and maintain the world's biggest video sites.

Osama Khalid is the first GNU Generation member of the month

Congratulations to Osama Khalid (OsamaK) for being selected as the first ever GNU Generation member of the month! Osama speaks Arabic natively, and has been using this gift to help the free software community. He worked with projects including KDE and VLC this past month to translate popular applications into Arabic. As a FSF/GNU translator, he also recently translated Holmes Wilson's blog post on Ogg Theora.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced updates related to its list of fully free GNU/Linux distributions, including the addition of one new distribution called Kongoni, and a milestone release of the Trisquel system. Trisquel, which was added to the list last December, has issued its 3.0 release, codenamed "Dwyn." It is the first in a new series of short term support releases that will be updated every six months with new software to add features, improved performance, and hardware compatibility.

I'd like to give a warm welcome to Prasad Pandit, author of newly-dubbed
packaged pem. Also, thanks once again to to Jim Meyering, already
maintainer of GNU coreutils and many other packages, nowjoining in on
GNU gzip.

As always, please feel free to write to me, karl@gnu.org, with any
GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events

2009-09-17 | The Free Software Movement -- Richard Stallman will
speak about the Free Software Movement, which campaigns for freedom
so that computer users can cooperate to control their own computing
activities. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating
system, often erroneously referred to as Linux, specifically to
establish these freedoms.

2009-09-19 | Software Freedom Day 2009 -- Please join the Free
Software Foundation as part of an international day celebrating
software freedom. We'll be one of the many groups around the world
hosting an event that day.

Take action with the FSF

Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's
work. You can contribute by joining at http://www.fsf.org/join. If
you're already a member, you can help refer new members (and earn some
rewards) by adding a line with your member number to your email
signature like:

The FSF is also always looking for volunteers
(http://www.fsf.org/volunteer). From rabble-rousing to hacking, from
issue coordination to envelope stuffing -- there's something here for
everybody to do. Also, head over to our campaign section
(http://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents,
DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.

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